Storm victims' relatives in U.S. feel helpless

Wednesday

Nov 13, 2013 at 12:01 AMNov 13, 2013 at 11:45 AM

WASHINGTON - District of Columbia resident Marlon Agbuya is haunted by the thought of his mother, who has breast cancer, ill and stuck in a typhoon-ravaged landscape, unable to get chemotherapy at a hospital that no longer is functioning.

WASHINGTON — District of Columbia resident Marlon Agbuya is haunted by the thought of his mother, who has breast cancer, ill and stuck in a typhoon-ravaged landscape, unable to get chemotherapy at a hospital that no longer is functioning.

Emerson Duga of Fairfax, Va., knows his 103-year-old mother’s house in a remote storm-hit area has been destroyed and fears that there is no way to get food to her.

And though Griselda Gruspe, a hairdresser in Fort Washington, Md., has heard that her brother is all right, she has no idea whether two of her sisters are alive.

As Typhoon Haiyan ravaged a swath of the Philippines five days ago, an estimated 3.4 million Filipinos across the United States braced for a period of uncertainty and anguish.

Although disaster hits the Philippines frequently, it’s different when it strikes one’s relatives, said Pinky Tabelon, 62, of Manassas, Va.

“You feel sorry for the people, but now, when it’s in Tacloban, when it’s in the place where I’m originally from, you can picture the place, you know what it looks like, you feel helpless,” she said.

Of the 400 people estimated to live on the island where her grandparents and cousins had houses, she had heard that only 27 survived.

For U.S.-based relatives, the inability to do more to help is agonizing.

Agbuya, 57, fretted over his elderly parents. They called his brother briefly in the Philippines on Friday to say that they were alive, but then the phone went out. His mother is in the midst of chemotherapy for breast cancer, but Agbuya has seen TV reports showing the decimated hospital where his parents live in Ormoc city.

“I saw it on TV — there is no functional hospital,” said Agbuya. “I’m terrible. My mother has chemo every Wednesday. She already missed one last week, and she will miss it tomorrow. I’d like to pull them out of there and send them to Manila so she can get treatment. But I don’t know where they are.”

Duga, 64, just hopes that neighbors will look after his 103-year-old mother. “She walks, but step by step,” he said. “That’s the oldest lady in that place.”

Thinking of the people in his mother’s town, Duga was comforted by one thought. “They will not leave each other alone.”

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